VCS Operations Reference

VCS Auto-Detection

Detect which VCS platform the current repo uses and select the right CLI:

# Check git remote
REMOTE_URL=$(git remote get-url origin 2>/dev/null)
if echo "$REMOTE_URL" | grep -q "github.com"; then
  VCS=github    # use `gh`
else
  VCS=gitlab    # use `glab`
fi

Session Config overrides:

• vcs: github|gitlab — force a specific platform
• gitlab-host: <host> — override auto-detected GitLab host (glab reads host from git remote by default)

How Other Skills Reference This

Directive: Consuming skills MUST NOT duplicate VCS auto-detection logic or CLI command syntax inline. This skill is the single source of truth for all VCS operations.

When a skill needs VCS operations, include this reference block in its instructions:

VCS Reference: Detect the VCS platform per the "VCS Auto-Detection" section of the gitlab-ops skill. Use CLI commands per the "Common CLI Commands" section. For GitLab API operations, see "Canonical Project Identity."

Canonical commands: All glab and gh command syntax — flags, output formats, pagination options — is defined in the "Common CLI Commands" section below. Consuming skills must reference that section rather than redefining commands. If a skill needs a command variant not listed there, add it to this file first, then reference it.

What consuming skills should include:

• The reference block above (copy-paste it verbatim)
• Any skill-specific parameters they pass to commands (e.g., label names, issue templates)
• They should NOT include raw glab/gh invocations or detection snippets

Canonical Project Identity

GitLab REST endpoints accept a URL-encoded namespace/project path. Select the GitLab host and project path explicitly; never derive a numeric project ID from glab repo view, search projects?search=, or use :id placeholders. Those forms can resolve through the ambient working directory or a stale search result and target another project after a rename, fork, or scaffold.

Set the identity once per operation sequence and reuse the encoded identifier without encoding it again:

GITLAB_HOST="<selected GitLab hostname>"
GROUP_PATH="<selected group path>"
PROJECT_NAME="<selected project name>"
PROJECT_PATH="$GROUP_PATH/$PROJECT_NAME"
ENCODED_PROJECT_PATH="$(node -e 'process.stdout.write(encodeURIComponent(process.argv[1]))' "$PROJECT_PATH")"

For a link target in another project, use the same path-first shape instead of a numeric ID:

TARGET_PROJECT_PATH="<target namespace>/<target project>"
TARGET_ENCODED_PROJECT_PATH="$(node -e 'process.stdout.write(encodeURIComponent(process.argv[1]))' "$TARGET_PROJECT_PATH")"

Pass --hostname "$GITLAB_HOST" to every glab api call. The endpoint itself then pins the project, including directly after creating a repository when the current directory does not yet identify the new project.

GitHub continues to use an owner/repo slug; gh repo takes it positionally and rejects -R:

gh repo view --json nameWithOwner -q '.nameWithOwner'

Canonical enumeration pattern

To enumerate ALL projects (or issues) in a group, a single page is never the whole result — paginate and guard against silent truncation:

# GitLab — paginate a group's projects, following x-next-page until empty
page=1
while [ -n "$page" ]; do
  resp=$(glab api --hostname "$GITLAB_HOST" "groups/<group-id>/projects?simple=true&include_subgroups=true&per_page=100&page=$page" --include)
  # parse the response body ($resp) for project ids/paths here, deduping by id.
  # Then advance by reading the `x-next-page` response header — an empty value
  # means this was the last page, so the loop exits (the guard above is what breaks).
  page=$(printf '%s\n' "$resp" | awk -F': *' 'tolower($1)=="x-next-page"{sub(/\r/,"",$2); print $2}')
done

• Follow pagination via the x-next-page response header — loop until it comes back empty. A single-page read on a known-large group is a signal the loop stopped early, not proof the group is small.
• Dedupe by project id — subgroup traversal can surface the same project more than once.
• Silent-zero guard: membership=true can return a misleadingly small subset (e.g. a host that only sees a handful of a group's dozens of projects). If the count looks suspiciously low relative to the known group size, retry WITHOUT membership (rely on include_subgroups=true alone) before trusting the result. A zero/one-page result on a known-large group is a probable auth/pagination bug — treat it as a bug signal, never as ground truth that "the group is actually empty."

Label Taxonomy

Taxonomy convention — priority REVERSED to scoped :: (supersedes #727 for this one axis).

• priority::<level> is canonical. #727's stated rationale was that "this repo mirrors to GitHub, which has no scoped-label semantics … while a migration would break every existing label reference and issue." Both halves were checked on 2026-07-25 and neither holds:
  • Issues are not mirrored at all. A consumer infra repo's GitHub-mirror runbook describes a git push-mirror with GitHub as "read-only downstream"; the external team-organization audit docs/gitlab-team-org-2026-06-21.md:45 confirms there is no two-way GitLab issue sync. Nothing crosses the boundary that a label rename could break. <!-- path-check: example -->
  • GitHub already uses the scoped form. On a GitHub consumer repo, gh api "repos/<owner>/<repo>/labels" returns priority::high, priority::low, priority::med, priority::medium across 77 open issues, and zero priority:high. Same pattern on a second consumer repo. GitHub treats :: as an ordinary string; it merely does not enforce mutual exclusion.
  • Volume agrees independently: 416 priority:: against 249 priority: and 7 bare at the time of the decision. Chasing the minority spelling would mean re-labelling the majority. Producers were migrated FIRST (this change); the label-data migration follows separately, because migrating data before producers means the divergence returns within a day.
• area: / type: / status: / from: stay SINGLE-COLON — but NOT on #727's rationale, which is disproven above. They stay because nothing measured argues for flipping them, and because each axis is its own migration cost. Flipping them is a separate decision and is explicitly NOT made here. Note that status in particular is the worst-disciplined axis on the instance (354 assignments, only 48 percent scoped, 5 genuine value conflicts), so any future flip there needs a conflict-resolution pass first.
• Readers accept both spellings. Every consumer that MATCHES a label compares through scripts/lib/label-scope.mjs normalizeLabel(), which collapses :: to : — so issues still carrying priority:high keep being counted until the data migration lands. Only WRITES are canonical.

Priority Labels

• priority::critical — blocking production or users
• priority::high — important, schedule this sprint
• priority::medium — plan for next sprint
• priority::low — backlog, nice-to-have

Status Labels

• status:ready — defined, ready to pick up
• status:in-progress — actively being worked on
• status:review — MR/PR created, awaiting review
• status:blocked — waiting on external dependency

Area Labels

• area:frontend | area:backend | area:database
• area:ai | area:security | area:testing
• area:ci | area:infrastructure | area:compliance
• area:skills | area:vcs | area:harness

Type Labels

• bug | feature | enhancement | refactor
• chore | documentation | epic | discovery | carryover | broken-window
• carryover — auto-created for 2×SPIRAL or FAILED agent tasks; see scripts/lib/spiral-carryover.mjs.
• broken-window — knowingly-broken shipment, hard due-date, filed by session-end Phase 2.6 (#730/H5); see scripts/lib/spiral-carryover.mjs (createBrokenWindowIssue).

Provenance Labels

• from:<agent> — SHOULD be applied to any issue/MR created by an automated agent (e.g. from:discovery, from:reconcile), so operators can filter agent-authored items from human-authored ones. Single-colon form, per the taxonomy convention above.

Issue Linking (blocks / is_blocked_by)

GitLab's native issue-link types blocks and is_blocked_by (glab api --silent --hostname "$GITLAB_HOST" -X POST "projects/${ENCODED_PROJECT_PATH}/issues/${ISSUE_IID}/links" -f target_project_id="$TARGET_ENCODED_PROJECT_PATH" -f target_issue_iid="$OTHER_ISSUE_IID" -f link_type="$LINK_TYPE") are a Premium/Ultimate license feature. Set LINK_TYPE to blocks or is_blocked_by; the target accepts an encoded project path, so no numeric project ID is needed. On a Free/Core-tier GitLab instance this call returns HTTP 403 — a license-gate signal, not an auth/permission failure. Do not retry with different credentials or escalate as an auth bug.

Fallback (non-Premium instances):

1. Use relates_to instead — link_type=relates_to is available on every GitLab tier (no ordering semantics, just an unscoped relation). Same API shape, only the link_type value changes:

   glab api --silent --hostname "$GITLAB_HOST" -X POST \
     "projects/${ENCODED_PROJECT_PATH}/issues/${ISSUE_IID}/links" \
     -f target_project_id="$TARGET_ENCODED_PROJECT_PATH" \
     -f target_issue_iid="$OTHER_ISSUE_IID" \
     -f link_type=relates_to
   

2. Document the blocking semantics in the issue body — since relates_to carries no ordering meaning, add an explicit ordering note to both issues, e.g. ⚠ Ordering: erst #<blocker_iid>, dann dieses Issue — blocks-Link nicht verfügbar (non-Premium).
3. Recognize the 403 as a license signal, not an auth error — before assuming a token/scope problem, try relates_to on the same project pair: if relates_to succeeds where blocks/is_blocked_by 403s, the license gate — not authentication — is the cause.

GitHub has no native issue-blocking relation at all — the body-ordering-note fallback in step 2 above is the standing convention there too, regardless of license tier (see "GitHub (gh)" below).

Common CLI Commands

Directive — consult this only for a command NOT listed below; every example here already complies. Each repo-scoped glab/gh invocation carries -R <OWNER>/<REPO> (glab also accepts GROUP/SUBGROUP/REPO or a full remote URL — resolveRepoSpec() in scripts/lib/vcs-repo-spec.mjs produces the right spec per platform); without the flag the target is whatever the ambient cwd remote happens to be, which is the wrong project in a sibling worktree, an /autopilot child, or a fork. Exactly four exceptions, each probed against the binaries: glab api/gh api (no --repo exists — pin the host with --hostname from resolveRepoHost() instead), gh repo <*> (rejects -R; takes the repository positionally), a glab repo call that already names the repository positionally, and — conditionally, not subcommand-wide — gh pr checks|view|diff|ready|merge|comment, where -R is legal ONLY alongside the <number>|<url>|<branch> positional: gh pr checks -R <OWNER>/<REPO> <BRANCH> carries the flag, while a positional-less gh pr checks -R <OWNER>/<REPO> --watch exits 1 with argument required when using the --repo flag — so name the PR or drop the flag, and never derive this from --help, which lists -R under INHERITED FLAGS with no such qualifier.

GitLab (glab)

# Issues
glab issue list -R <OWNER>/<REPO> --per-page 50                            # All open issues
glab issue list -R <OWNER>/<REPO> --label "status:ready" --per-page 10     # Ready to work on
glab issue list -R <OWNER>/<REPO> --label "priority::high" --per-page 10   # High priority
glab issue list -R <OWNER>/<REPO> --closed --per-page 10                   # Recently closed
glab issue view -R <OWNER>/<REPO> <IID>                                    # View issue details
glab issue view -R <OWNER>/<REPO> <IID> --comments                         # With comments
glab issue create -R <OWNER>/<REPO> --title "title" --label "priority::high,status:ready"
glab issue update -R <OWNER>/<REPO> <IID> --label "status:in-progress"     # ADDS; existing labels stay — see caveat below
glab issue update -R <OWNER>/<REPO> <IID> --unlabel "status:in-progress"   # removes only the named label(s)
glab issue close -R <OWNER>/<REPO> <IID>                                   # then VERIFY: re-read the issue; it must show state=closed
glab issue note -R <OWNER>/<REPO> <IID> -m "Comment text"                  # Add comment

# MRs
glab mr list -R <OWNER>/<REPO>                                             # Open MRs
glab mr create -R <OWNER>/<REPO> --fill --draft                            # Create draft MR
glab mr merge -R <OWNER>/<REPO> <MR_IID>                                   # Merge MR

# Pipelines
glab pipeline list -R <OWNER>/<REPO> --per-page 5                          # Recent pipelines
glab pipeline status -R <OWNER>/<REPO> <ID>                                # Pipeline details

# API (no --repo exists here — the encoded endpoint and explicit host identify the target)
glab api --hostname "$GITLAB_HOST" "projects/${ENCODED_PROJECT_PATH}/issues?state=opened&per_page=50"
glab api --hostname "$GITLAB_HOST" "projects/${ENCODED_PROJECT_PATH}/milestones?state=active"

Label update caveat: the glab flags add or remove, the raw API labels= sets the whole list. Measured 2026-09-19 with glab 1.117.0 (44790937b): glab issue update <IID> --label "status:in-progress" on 7 issues (#1390 #1389 #1339 #1298 #1273 #1221 #1202) ADDED the label and left every existing label in place. Read-only re-check (canonical identity form above): glab api --hostname "$GITLAB_HOST" "projects/${ENCODED_PROJECT_PATH}/issues/${ISSUE_IID}" | jq .labels → for #1390 ["area:meta","follow-up","priority::low","status:in-progress","type:chore"]. glab issue update --help agrees (-l --label Add labels., -u --unlabel Remove labels.). To remove a label, use --unlabel (comma-separated for several); stripStatusLabels in scripts/lib/issue-close-strip-labels.mjs does exactly that. The raw REST API is different, and this part comes from the docs, not a measurement: the GitLab Issues API documents labels on PUT /projects/:id/issues/:issue_iid as "Comma-separated label names for an issue. Set to an empty string to unassign all labels.", with add_labels / remove_labels as the incremental parameters. So a glab api --silent --hostname "$GITLAB_HOST" -X PUT "projects/${ENCODED_PROJECT_PATH}/issues/${ISSUE_IID}" -f labels=… call must carry the FULL desired set; prefer add_labels= / remove_labels=. Other glab versions were not measured, so re-run the read-only check after an upgrade. glab mr update lists the same --label "Add labels." / --unlabel "Remove labels." help text in 1.117.0; its behaviour was not measured.

Close verification: after glab issue close <IID>, always verify the close actually landed — re-read the issue (glab issue view <IID>) and confirm state: closed in the output. A stale or wrong project path, or a silent 404, can report local success while closing nothing; use the canonical project identity above for API operations rather than resolving a numeric ID.

Commit-body close-keyword footgun: GitLab (and GitHub) auto-close an issue when a commit pushed to the default branch contains a close keyword — close/closes/closed/fix/fixes/fixed/resolve/resolves/resolved — followed by #N ANYWHERE in the commit body, not just the subject line. This fires even inside a negation ("does NOT close #N") — the platform pattern-matches the keyword + issue reference; it does not parse English negation, so the negation offers no protection. Rule: when a commit body needs to MENTION an issue without closing intent, always use a non-closing reference — refs #N, part of #N, siehe #N — never a close-keyword verb next to the number, negated or not.

-f/--raw-field vs -F/--field on glab api: -f (--raw-field) sends a literal string value with no coercion and no @file expansion. -F (--field) interprets a value starting with @ as a file to read, and coerces bare true/false/null/numeric strings to their typed form. Prefer -f for literal values — it avoids an unintended @-expansion when a value happens to start with @ (e.g. an @mention in a comment body).

GitHub (gh)

# Issues
gh issue list -R <OWNER>/<REPO> --limit 50                                 # All open issues
gh issue list -R <OWNER>/<REPO> --label "status:ready" --limit 10          # Ready to work on
gh issue list -R <OWNER>/<REPO> --label "priority::high" --limit 10        # High priority
gh issue list -R <OWNER>/<REPO> --state closed --limit 10                  # Recently closed
gh issue view -R <OWNER>/<REPO> <NUMBER>                                   # View issue details
gh issue view -R <OWNER>/<REPO> <NUMBER> --comments                        # With comments
gh issue create -R <OWNER>/<REPO> --title "title" --label "priority::high,status:ready"
gh issue edit -R <OWNER>/<REPO> <NUMBER> --add-label "status:in-progress"
gh issue close -R <OWNER>/<REPO> <NUMBER>
gh issue comment -R <OWNER>/<REPO> <NUMBER> --body "Comment text"          # Add comment

# PRs
gh pr list -R <OWNER>/<REPO> --state open                                  # Open PRs
gh pr create -R <OWNER>/<REPO> --fill --draft                              # Create draft PR
gh pr merge -R <OWNER>/<REPO> <NUMBER>                                     # Merge PR

# Workflows (CI equivalent)
gh run list -R <OWNER>/<REPO> --limit 5                                    # Recent workflow runs
gh run view -R <OWNER>/<REPO> <RUN_ID>                                     # Run details

# API (no --repo exists here — the endpoint path IS the target; pin the host with --hostname)
gh api "repos/{owner}/{repo}/issues?state=open&per_page=50"
gh api "repos/{owner}/{repo}/milestones?state=open"

Issue Templates

Bug Template

## Description
What happens vs. what should happen.

## Steps to Reproduce
1.
2.

## Root Cause (if known)

## Acceptance Criteria
- [ ]

Feature Template

## Goal
What should be achieved and why.

## Tasks
- [ ]

## Acceptance Criteria
- [ ]

## Session Type
[housekeeping|feature|deep]

Carryover Template (from /close)

## [Carryover] Original Task Description

### What was completed
- [completed items]

### What remains
- [ ] [remaining task 1]
- [ ] [remaining task 2]

### Context for next session
[relevant context, file paths, decisions made]

### Revisit-Trigger
[the concrete condition or event that reopens this — e.g. "when <metric/state> passes <threshold>", "at the next <session type/release>". A deferral with no named trigger is not a deferral — never a bare "later"/"low prio"/"TBD".]

### Open Questions
_(optional — include only when unanswered questions remain in STATE.md `## Open Questions` at close; omit this section entirely otherwise)_
- [ ] [unanswered question 1] (source: W<N>/<agent>, prio: high|medium|low)
- [ ] [unanswered question 2] (source: W<N>/<agent>, prio: high|medium|low)

### Original Issue
Relates to #ORIGINAL_IID

### Revisit-Trigger is mandatory for the /close carryover template above: a carryover deferred without a concrete, checkable reopen condition is a rot risk — "later" reliably means "never". (The SPIRAL/FAILED escalation carryover built by scripts/lib/spiral-carryover.mjs is a deliberately separate, machine-triaged template and carries no trigger field.)

Discovery Finding

## [Discovery] <finding title>

**Probe:** <probe_name>
**Severity:** <priority::critical|high|medium|low>
**Category:** <code|infra|ui|arch|session|audit|vault|feature>

### Finding

<description of the problem>

### Evidence

- **File:** `<file_path>`
- **Line:** <line_number>
- **Code:**

<matched_text with surrounding context>

### Impact

<why this matters — severity rationale>

### Recommended Fix

<concrete fix suggestion>

### Acceptance Criteria

- [ ] <specific, verifiable condition>
- [ ] Quality gates pass after fix

Labels: type:discovery, priority::<level>, area:<inferred>, status:ready

Template-First Enforcement (PSA-005 + #519)

Pattern 3 of the gsd Pattern Adoption (Issue #519) registers a PreToolUse hook hooks/pre-bash-templates-first.mjs that blocks gh|glab pr|mr|issue create|new Bash calls when the current session contains no prior Read on a matching template file.

When this matters: before you or a subagent opens an MR, PR, or issue via CLI, a matching template must have been read in the current session:

• GitHub: .github/pull_request_template.md / .github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE*
• GitLab: .gitlab/merge_request_templates/Default.md / .gitlab/issue_templates/* <!-- path-check: example -->

Accepted template paths are configured in .orchestrator/policy/templates-policy.json (versioned, operator-editable). Default behaviour:

• enforcement: "block" — hook exits 2 when no prior template Read is found
• Allow-list of host-specific template globs (GitHub + GitLab by default)
• bypass_patterns — list of command substrings that skip the hook (e.g. CI/bot calls)

Bypass options for the current session (when the hook blocks unexpectedly):

1. Read the template first — re-run the create call after a Read on the template path; the hook re-evaluates and sees the Read.
2. Session acknowledgement — run /templates-ack [reason] (commands/templates-ack.md); it verifies the invoking session before recording the acknowledgement, and the hook then allows all subsequent create calls in this session. Never write the acknowledgement file by hand — that skips the command's session check.

What the hook mechanically enforces (what this skill previously documented as convention only):

• "Template-first" for every new MR/PR/issue
• Prevents convention drift across repos by turning the documentation requirement into a hard gate — the same shift from rule to mechanism that PSA-003 made for destructive commands

If the hook blocks incorrectly, follow this sequence:

1. Read the template — retry the create call.
2. If the hook still blocks, open a bug issue against hooks/pre-bash-templates-first.mjs with reproduce steps (command, session ID, template path that should have matched).

Issue/MR Creation Checklist (with template-first gate active)

# 1. Read the relevant template first (satisfies the hook)
# GitLab MR
Read .gitlab/merge_request_templates/Default.md

# GitHub PR
Read .github/PULL_REQUEST_TEMPLATE.md

# 2. Then create — hook now passes
glab mr create -R <OWNER>/<REPO> --title "..." --description "..."
gh pr create -R <OWNER>/<REPO> --title "..." --body "..."

Cross-References

• Hook implementation: hooks/pre-bash-templates-first.mjs
• Read-history helper: hooks/_lib/transcript-history.mjs (checks session transcript for prior Reads)
• Enforcement policy: .orchestrator/policy/templates-policy.json
• Session acknowledgement: /templates-ack (commands/templates-ack.md), the only sanctioned writer
• Sister hook (destructive-command model): hooks/pre-bash-destructive-guard.mjs
• PRD: "gsd Pattern Adoption Quick-Wins" (#519; archived in the private Meta-Vault) § Pattern 3 + § 3 Gherkin Pattern 3